Cognitive Penetration: Recap

A quick recap on: what we understand by the claim that cognition penetrates perception; why this is significant; and our next steps.

Reading (optional): Firestone, C. and Scholl, B. J. (2016). Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39.

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The Case Against the Cognitive Penetration of Perception

The Tunnel Effect (Burke, 1952) provides one demonstration of how your thoughts appear unable to influence your perception. A solid blue circle goes into a tunnel, and an orange square outline emerges. Despite knowing that these cannot be the same object, a single continuous movement is perceived. If what you believe or know could affect what you perceive, it’s influence should be apparent this case. The fact that it is not makes it improbable that cognition penetrates perception.

Reading (optional):

• Burke, Luke. ‘On the Tunnel Effect’. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 4, no. 3 (1952): 121–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470215208416611.
• Fodor, Jerry. ‘Observation Reconsidered’. Philosophy of Science 51, no. 1 (1984): 23–43.

The Case For the Cognitive Penetration of Perception

What evidence supports the view that cognition penetrates perception? Some early findings reported by Bruner and Goodman (1947) provide a template for later research. More recently, Levin & Banaji (2006) appear to have shown that your beliefs about race categories can influence your perception of the lightness of a face. This is among the best, most direct evidence for the view that cognition penetrates perception.

Reading (optional):

• Bruner, Jerome, and Cecile Goodman. ‘Value and Need as Organizing Factors in Perception’. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 42, no. 1 (1947): 33–44.
• Witzel, Christoph. ‘An Easy Way to Show Memory Color Effects’: I-Perception, 1 August 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041669516663751.
• Witzel, C., M. Olkkonen, and K. R. Gegenfurtner. ‘Memory Colours Affect Colour Appearance.’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 39 (2016): e262. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X15002587.
• Olkkonen, Maria, Thorsten Hansen, and Karl R. Gegenfurtner. ‘Color Appearance of Familiar Objects: Effects of Object Shape, Texture, and Illumination Changes’. Journal of Vision 8, no. 5 (2008): 13–13. https://doi.org/10.1167/8.5.13.
• Levin, Daniel T., and Mahzarin R. Banaji. ‘Distortions in the Perceived Lightness of Faces: The Role of Race Categories’. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 135, no. 4 (2006): 501–12. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.135.4.501.

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Cognitive Penetration: Evaluation and Conclusion

We have seen that there is a body of evidence in favour of the view that cognition penetrates perception, and also a body of evidence in favour of the converse. How should we respond to this dilemma? By considering how well each body of evidence has stood up to further experimental scruitiny, we can reach a robust conclusion.

Reading (optional):

• Carter, Launor, and Kermit Schooler. ‘Value, Need, and Other Factors in Perception’. Psychological Review 56, no. 4 (1949): 200–207.
• Valenti, J. J., and Chaz Firestone. ‘Finding the “Odd One out”: Memory Color Effects and the Logic of Appearance’. Cognition 191 (2019): 103934. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.04.003.
• Firestone, Chaz, and Brian J. Scholl. ‘Can You Experience “Top-down” Effects on Perception?: The Case of Race Categories and Perceived Lightness’. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 22, no. 3 (2015): 694–700. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0711-5.
• Baker, Lewis J., and Daniel T. Levin. ‘The Face-Race Lightness Illusion Is Not Driven by Low-Level Stimulus Properties: An Empirical Reply to Firestone and Scholl (2014)’. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 23, no. 6 (2016): 1989–95. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1048-z.

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Intro to the Question about Awareness

Most central features of human life, such as disease, reproduction, cooperation, language and politics can be investigated. In each case there are basic facts that most researchers accept and broad agreement about methods of investigation. None of this holds in the case of awareness (or consciousness, as it is sometimes called). If we are ever to understand what it is, we need to by start thinking about what roles awareness plays. Why does it matter that we are sometimes perceptually aware of things?

Reading (optional): Kelber, A., Vorobyev, M., and Osorio, D. (2003). Animal colour vision – behavioural tests and physiological concepts. Biological Reviews, 78(01):81–118.

A Secondary Subwaking Self?

According to what I will call the Simple Hypothesis, Perceptual awareness enables us to identify things and report what we have identified. Sidis (1898) challenges the Simple Hypothesis with an experiment on perception without awareness.

Reading (optional): Sidis, B. (1898). The psychology of suggestion. Appleton, New York.

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Blindsight

Blindsight is ‘the ability of patients with absolute, clinically established, visual field defects caused by occipital cortical damage to detect, localize, and discriminate visual stimuli despite being phenomenally visually unaware of them’ (Cowey, 2010).

Reading (optional):

• Cowey, A. (2010). The blindsight saga. Experimental Brain Research, 200(1):3–24.
• Marcel, A. J. (1998). Blindsight and shape perception: Deficit of visual consciousness or of visual function? Brain, 121(8):1565–1588.
• Weiskrantz, L., Barbur, J. L., and Sahraie, A. (1995). Parameters affecting conscious versus unconscious visual discrimination with damage to the visual cortex (V1). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 92(13):6122–6126.
• Shea, N. and Frith, C. D. (2016). Dual-process theories and consciousness: The case for ‘Type Zero’ cognition. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2016(1).

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Awareness: First Interim Conclusion

What are the functions of perceptual awareness? The Simplest Idea is that Perceptual awareness enables control of action. But we have already seen three objections to this Idea.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.

Reading (optional):

• Kosslyn, Stephen M., William L. Thompson, Maria F. Costantini-Ferrando, Nathaniel M. Alpert, and David Spiegel. ‘Hypnotic Visual Illusion Alters Color Processing in the Brain’. American Journal of Psychiatry 157, no. 8 (1 August 2000): 1279–84. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.157.8.1279.
• Koivisto, Mika, Svetlana Kirjanen, Antti Revonsuo, and Sakari Kallio. ‘A Preconscious Neural Mechanism of Hypnotically Altered Colors: A Double Case Study’. PLOS ONE 8, no. 8 (5 August 2013): e70900. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0070900.
• Kadosh, Roi Cohen, Avishai Henik, Andres Catena, Vincent Walsh, and Luis J. Fuentes. ‘Induced Cross-Modal Synaesthetic Experience Without Abnormal Neuronal Connections’: Psychological Science, 1 February 2009.
• Fodor, J. (1983). The Modularity of Mind: an Essay on Faculty Psychology. Bradford book. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass ; London.